In general, so-called ring tone refers to the ringing tone of a called terminal when receiving a call; while the ring back tone refers to the ringing tone played by network for a calling terminal when the calling terminal calls the called terminal. While waiting for the receiving party to pick up, what the caller hears is the ring back tone subscribed by the called terminal in the network of the communication system but not the original ringing tone. The ring back tones could be music or songs stored in advance on the network of the communication system which provides the ring back tone service.
The ring back tone service may be applied to not only mobile networks, but also fixed networks or 3G communication networks, such as WCDMA network.
Since 3G communication networks support multimedia service, not only voice but also video pictures may be adopted as ring back tones in 3G communication networks. However, multimedia ring back tone service is not yet realized in 3G communication networks.